A resolution expressing support for the goals of National Adoption Day and National Adoption Month by promoting national awareness of adoption and the children awaiting families, celebrating children and families involved in adoption, and encouraging the people of the United States to secure safety, permanency, and well-being for all children.

Mr. President, Senator Klobuchar and I are here to talk about National Adoption Month.

I think we started a little bit late, so by unanimous consent, I ask that we be allowed to extend our closing time by the same number of minutes.

Mr. President, it is good for both of us and our colleagues to be thinking this month about National Adoption Month, to recognize the celebration of National Adoption Day, which will occur this Saturday. I have had the great privilege of serving as cochair of the Coalition on Adoption with Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota. It is an opportunity not only for us to work together in a bipartisan way, but at an event we attended just the other

day, I was told the adoption caucus in the House and Senate is the biggest caucus of either body and the biggest caucus of the Congress. Of course, it should be. It is built on the idea that kids have the need of a family and that there are families out there who want to adopt kids. Whether that is nationally, domestically, or internationally, we really work hard to try to make that more possible.

Our House cochairs have been great to work with. Senator Klobuchar and I are working on several pieces of legislation right now to make it easier for families to adopt and to make sure adopted families have the support they need to stay strong.

One piece of legislation we are working on is the Adoption Tax Credit Refundability Act. It is a little bit outside the norm of the discussion of simplifying the Tax Code, but I was pleased the other day to have some important evidence put on the table when the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--who, by the way, is an adoptive father of two sons and an advocate for adoption and for kids--when the current adoption tax credit was not in the House bill, he said one of the reasons it is not here is so many families who adopt kids don't pay income tax because of the low level of their income. My thought was, well, that is exactly what Senator Klobuchar and I were saying. That should be a refundable credit as well as a credit, but I am glad to see the current credit back in the tax bill that the Finance Committee is looking at now. We want to continue to look at not only the current credit but expanding that.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, one-third of all adopted children live in families with an annual household income at or below 200 percent of the poverty level. It is because of that the tax burden is low. They don't pay income taxes. The adoption tax credit isn't as helpful to those families as it is to families who actually have income tax to credit it against.

More than 400,000 children now in the United States are also in the foster care system, and more than 100,000 of those 400,000 kids are ready and waiting for families they can call their own. Lots of other children need to be in families all over the world, but we can be looking carefully at the children in our system now. We both looked-- and others have joined us in that--at the foster care system and ensuring behavioral health screening happens within 30 days of getting into that system. Once you get into the foster care system, often it is because of unavoidable challenges families face, and often it is because of challenges kids should never have to face. So that early evaluation of what is going on there can really make a difference in how foster kids are dealt with in the system and how they get ready--as 100,000 of them now are--to leave the foster care system and be adopted.

Before I turn to Senator Klobuchar, I just want to mention some kids right now who are on what is called the Missouri Heart Gallery. More than 1,200 Missouri children are in need of permanent homes. The Missouri Heart Gallery is a place to look, as we approach the end of this year, to see what the stories of some of these kids are.

Brandon, for instance, who is 12, loves to play games. LEGO sets are his favorite toy. He likes to smile and give hugs. He probably hasn't gotten enough hugs in his life up until now, but it is possible to try your best to catch up with kids who need hugs. He needs a stable and loving family. He is often playing outside. It would be wonderful if he were playing outside a house or a home that he knew was a permanent home for him.

Shaniah and Shanae are sisters who hope to be placed together, and they hope to have a chance to maintain contact with their aunt following placement. Shaniah loves dancing and cheerleading. Her favorite color is green. She hopes to be a scientist one day. Shanae's favorite hobby is singing, and she makes friends really easily between her dancing and singing skills that she shares with her sister. Both of these girls would really bring a lot of life and vitality into what we would hope would be their family forever.

Brandon, Shaniah, and Shanae are in need of permanent and loving homes. This is a time when we ought to be thinking not only about the obstacles to adoption, the things that encourage adoption but also how we can make the support system for both adoption and foster care and adoption out of foster care work better.

I know my colleagues will be eager to join Senator Klobuchar and me in marking November as National Adoption Month and by passing our resolution today.

I turn to my friend from Minnesota Senator Klobuchar.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Klobuchar. We will continue to work on this. We are glad it is so well-received and these are issues our colleagues pay close attention to. Whether it is domestic or international, we are going to continue to find ways to open the doors to more homes and to get access to more tire swings. I look forward to that work.

Mr. President, as in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 331, submitted earlier today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, first of all, I would like to thank Senator Blunt for his leadership. We have worked side by side on these issues for so many years, and I am really pleased--as he noted--that there has been a lot of focus on this issue of the adoption tax credit and not only how it needs to be fixed in any tax bill and make sure it is maintained, but, in fact, it should be expanded on. I thank him. We have both been advocating for that.

One of the reasons I am so involved in this issue is, in my State of Minnesota, we have historically had a lot of adoptions. One is international adoptions. We have one of the highest rates of international adoptions in the country. We have families who have opened their hearts to kids from Vietnam to Guatemala, to Nepal, to Haiti.

I have had the opportunity to witness the power of adoption firsthand when I served for 8 years as the Hennepin County attorney--which is the largest prosecutor's office in our State. We also have civil jurisdiction so one of the things I worked on was speeding up the amount of time it took for foster kids to get out and into permanent homes. I was able to see firsthand those loving parents who would do anything to bring these kids into their families. When you see it internationally, it just breaks your heart if it goes on for years and years and years.

Right now, domestically, over 425,000 children are living without permanent families in our foster care system. Over 110,000 of these kids are eligible for adoption. One of the reasons Senator Blunt and I came together today is to make people aware that, yes, there is international adoption--it is so important--but there are also kids right here in America who would love to be taken in by a family. That is part of the theme of our Adoption Month for the country.

We have tackled a number of issues over the last few years, along with former Senator Landrieu of Louisiana. One of them was the International Adoption Simplification Act, which was a big help in terms of making sure that older children weren't left behind when younger siblings were adopted. I worked on that bill with Senator Inhofe; then, Senators Blunt and Landrieu and I introduced the Accuracy for Adoptees Act, which helps greatly to ensure that families don't have to fight with foreign authorities to get their kids' documents changed.

We are also working on some of the international issues now because of the slowdown in international adoptions and the work that we can do there. We look forward to working with the State Department and other agencies on that.

One of the best parts of our job is helping a family in our home State with an adoption. Recently, I got to visit a family in the western suburbs of Minnesota. For years, they had been waiting to adopt two Ethiopian boys. We worked really hard on this, as the halt of adoptions out of Ethiopia affected more than 200 American families; one of them was David and Katie Norton. Because of the work that was done and the push that was made, a number of these kids came home to their families.

I got to swing on a tire swing with these two rather fun boys who, every day, like to put on their bicycle helmets just because they think that is cool, and they wear them around the backyard. We had a great time with them.

There are other children, and it makes you realize how close to home this is and how pleased we are to welcome these kids to American families. That is what National Adoption Month is all about. We want more kids to be able to swing on tire swings, so we will continue to work with the foster care system, as well as the international

adoption system, to make this a reality for more and more orphans across the world.

I thank Senator Blunt for his leadership, and we look forward to working on this issue for many years to come.